standpoint, but in the most abstract scientific sense, as a force,
resulting as all forces must, from some cause of equal or greater
potentiality, and moving, as all forces do, along the lines of least
resistance. The movement proceeded, as we know, from the East, away
from, if not out of, the cradle of the Caucasian race; from where
expansion was hemmed and development was hampered, towards the West and
South where the possibilities of both were greater and the requisite
conditions more favorable. This was forty centuries ago; from that time
to the present the movement has still been westward and southward,
and by virtue of the same natural law that operated in the early dawn
of history, its course is manifestly destined to trend in the same
direction for some time longer.
In the meantime, throughout all the course of the historic past,
migration after migration has successively marked the greatest epochs
in the annals of mankind. The migration of Abraham was followed by
many others, none indeed of more far-reaching significance, but all
or nearly all of greater magnitude, and not a few of them of vast
importance as factors in the history of man. Some centuries after
Abraham's time the migration of the Canaanite Cadmus westward to
the Isles of Greece, or perhaps the migration of the Pelasgic tribes
westward from Asia Minor, opened the first chapter in the history of
Europe. Still later, through the great migrations at the close of
the Roman period, and in the early Middle Ages, the barbarians of
Europe became imbued with the leaven of Jewish ideals in the form of
Christianity, and further still in the course of time the migrations of
the hunted Jews from Germany to Poland, and from Spain to Holland and
to England, influenced permanently the current of the world's affairs.
Subsequently, the migration of the Pilgrim Fathers to North America
left an indelible impress in our modern civilization, and finally the
migrations of yesterday and to-day, trending still westward to the
Pacific, and the offshoots of the current to Australia, to New Zealand
and to South America, have opened in the history of mankind a chapter
which the Twentieth Century will not complete.
It is remarkable that of all these notable migrations, that of Abraham
may be considered as not only first in point of time, but also as
altogether normal in its character. In all the later historic movements
of this kind, the element of force is more or less definitely manifest,
but Abraham's migration was a peaceful one, and when he took up the
sword at all, it was only to benefit the people among whom he dwelt.
We find him earnestly pleading the cause of his adopted countrymen,
notwithstanding their great wickedness; he bought and paid for even his
last resting place rather than accept it as a gift, and in general he
figures on the historic horizon as in all respects not only a typical
but a model immigrant.
Had the great migrations of later times been as peaceful as that of
Abraham, the annals of humanity would have been less troubled than we
find them. But the subsequent movements of population were migrations
of masses of people, forced from their native soil by extraneous
pressure or lured away by the incitements of conquest, or by both
agencies combined, and such movements must in their very nature, be
violent and sanguinary.
The earliest peoples required for their sustenance far more space than
do equal numbers in a more civilized state. They had no developed
means of subsistence; the most primitive inhabitants relied solely
on the products of unaided nature, and these they found mainly in the
chase. As this became more difficult, or its produce scarcer, they
betook themselves to herding, a culture in itself, the first step
in civilization, and the first expedient to support an increasing
population. In this respect the inhabitants of the Eastern plains were
far in advance of their Western contemporaries; the Asiatic herdsman
was more favorably situated than the huntsman in the forests of
primeval Europe, and hence we find both culture and population first
evolved in the East and flowing thence by natural sequence towards
the West. Culture, the outgrowth of population, was first planted in
the East; there it rooted and there it blossomed, and there humanity
gathered its first fruits, but its ripened products have fructified
upon its Western grafts. Westward indeed the star of Empire has made
its way, and here on our Western Continent, under the ægis of our great
Republic, under the influence of American liberty and freedom, it seems
destined to reach its ascendant.
In the upbuilding of this Republic the descendants of the first great
emigrant have taken, as we have recorded in the preceding pages, an
ample share, and among these descendants the compatriots of the present
victims of Russian barbarity were by no means wanting. The emigration
of the Slavic Jews to America had been going on in a normal manner,
and therefore to a limited extent, for a long time before the present
exodus, and in fact, so to speak, from the beginning. After each of the
successive uprisings of Poland against the barbarous tyranny of its
Russian oppressors, from the time of Pulaski, who after leading his
countrymen vainly against the Russian hordes in 1768, came to America
to die in the struggle for liberty here; from the time of Kosciuszko,
who came here to fight successfully for the independence of our
country and then returned to fight vainly for the independence of his
own, there have been Polish emigrants to America and among them were
many Jews. Haym Solomon, who afforded one of the noblest examples of
devotion to American liberty that is recorded in our annals, was as we
have seen[122] a Polish Jew and an intimate of the two patriots named
above, and on Pulaski's staff was a Jewish officer[123] and others of
his Jewish countrymen were doubtless serving in his command.
Down to the bloody outbreak of Russian fanaticism in 1879-1880,
followed by the officially decreed expulsions of the succeeding years
the influx of the Slavic Jews, was, as we have noted, a normal tide,
like that which brought to these shores millions of immigrants from
every European country. Normally, without being forced, and of their
own volition they had come, as had the Sephardic Jews from England
and Holland during our Colonial period and in the early decades of
our independence, and as the German Jews came with the stream of
German immigration after the beginning of steam navigation and the
Revolution of 1848. The English Sephardim ceased to emigrate after
their enfranchisement in 1850; the German Jews have ceased to emigrate
since their enfranchisement in 1871, and the Polish and Russian Jews
would come in fewer numbers if they were not driven from their homes,
and would scarcely come at all if but the boon of unhampered domicile,
not to mention political liberty, were accorded to them there.
* * * * *
The calamitous condition of general suffering into which the Russian
Jews were plunged by the proscriptive policy of their government,
appears to have passed its acute stage. While the expulsion of the
Jews from the interior of the Empire and their settlement, permanent
or temporary, in the "Pale" of the Western Russian provinces,
including Poland, was in the height of its progress a few years ago,
the number of those who were eventually forced to emigrate was very
large, aggregating, it is estimated, nearly two hundred thousand in
a single year. The newcomers in the Pale, nearly all of them utterly
impoverished through pillage by the low element of the populace and by
the extortion of the officials, disorganized the economic condition
of the older settlers in the district and caused a most excessive
competition for the means of livelihood. The emigration of some of the
surplus population and the gradual reorganization of the remainder,
has tended to render the general condition less acute, and while a
considerable emigration from the Pale must, in the nature of things,
be looked for until the existent conditions are fully ameliorated, the
great exodus that marked the years 1891-2 is not likely to be repeated
unless further measures of oppression and repression are adopted by the
Russian government.
Meanwhile the world looks on while the Jews of Western Europe and
America are laboring to help those of their Russian brethren who,
unable to gain a foothold in the Pale, are forced out from their
wretched surroundings. The world looks on while the philanthropist
Maurice de Hirsch, emulating the spirit of Montefiore, is devoting
his wealth to the succor of his co-religionists and striving to found
an asylum for them on the plains of Argentina. It looks on while the
Alliance Israélite Universelle, from its headquarters in Paris, is
establishing and maintaining primary schools for the Jews throughout
the Orient, and agricultural schools for the Russian refugees in
Palestine; while this educational work is being seconded by both the
American and European branches of the Order of B'nai B'rith, and while
Edmond de Rothschild is fostering agricultural colonies near Jaffa and
Jerusalem and aiding Russian Jews to gain a foothold in the land of
their forefathers.
In our own country agricultural colonies of Russian Jews have been
founded, educational institutions built up, distribution of the
refugees effected, through the efforts of Jewish communal organizations
or by means of the funds devoted for the purpose by Baron de Hirsch,
or by both in unison. The de Hirsch Trust dispenses in this manner the
income of $2,500,000 donated for this purpose by the great-hearted
and open-handed philanthropist, supplementing to this large extent
the charitable efforts of the American Jews in their work of succor.
That work is carried on by independent local organizations both in
Europe and America, ramifying from the Vistula westward to the Golden
Gate; centering in Königsberg, Memel, Lemberg and Brody, in Berlin and
Vienna, Hamburg and Bremen, in Paris, London and Liverpool, in New
York, Philadelphia, Boston and Baltimore, in Chicago, San Francisco
and Portland, and at other intervening points. These organizations
are apart from the great movement organized by Baron de Hirsch and
chartered in England under the title of "The Jewish Colonization
Association." That institution, which the Baron has endowed with
the sum of $10,000,000, has its headquarters in St. Petersburg
and affiliated centers throughout the Jewish Pale, and is devoted
exclusively to furthering the Jewish emigration to the Argentine
Republic. The Russian Jewish emigrants to other lands proceed wholly
by dint of their own means or those of their relatives already in
the haven of rest, and these wayfarers are frequently impoverished
and always in need of protection and counsel. Onerous as has been
the burden which the wickedness of Russian folly has imposed on the
Jewish people at large, they have thus far coped with a reasonable
degree of success against the almost overwhelming difficulties of the
situation.[124]
During the progress of this movement a hue and cry has repeatedly been
raised all along the roads which the Russian refugees have taken in
escaping from their oppressors and in seeking an asylum and resting
place. Here in our country, where many of our State governments have
made organized efforts to induce immigration into their borders, where
numerous towns and hamlets in the interior are organizing "booms" to
increase their population, here, where the single State of Texas, with
less than two and a half millions of population, extends over an area
greater than Germany and England together; where a state like Montana,
larger than England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland combined, has a
population of but 132,000, only half as many as the single English town
of Leeds, here there have not been wanting those who have constantly
urged in Congress and in the press, that European immigration should be
not only regulated, but largely restricted and even entirely debarred.
All this because in the metropolitan centres and at times at other
points, a surplus of wage workers in one or two industries was causing
friction and disturbance.
* * * * *
This agitation, by reason of its obvious causes, may well claim our
attention in connection with our present subject.
The effort towards better material conditions which has formed the main
impulse of all emigration movements, has, as we learn from history,
been always fraught with suffering and misery for the populations first
effected, and frequently for several of the succeeding generations,
but, in the end, improvement has resulted to the greater number at
least. Even when the natural surroundings of a migrated population
are not more favorable than those of their previous experience, the
mere change of environment has generally furthered an improvement of
their social arrangements. The change of their location may disappoint
an immigrant people in their hopes of material betterment, but they
never fail to take advantage of their new beginnings to eliminate
from their new organization such conditions as their previous
experience had proved objectionable. Migrations, whether peaceful or
otherwise, and for that matter sudden changes of material conditions
generally, inevitably consume a large part of the existing powers
of those effected, but where those powers are not totally exhausted
and destroyed, where enough energy remains to form a nucleus of
recuperative force, and especially where the new material surroundings
are more favorable than those which were left behind, there a marked
improvement of all the conditions of life, physical and intellectual,
material and social, becomes developed. It would be superfluous to cite
the proofs of this proposition; the history of civilization is a record
of its examples, and its latest annals are but statements of this fact.
Palpable as is this fact, and nowhere is it more so than on this
Western Continent, and especially in our own country, there are yet
many who regard an immigrant with the narrow prejudice of mediæval
ignorance, and to whom a stranger is still, as to the barbarians of
old, an enemy. Over and over again in the course of the great new
departure which the establishment and growth of these United States
has made in the world's history, over and over again in the course of
our development, has the debarment of immigrants been proposed and
advocated. At times the opposition to the new comers has been born
of Old World animosities, at other times of religious prejudice, and
latterly we hear most frequently of restrictions proposed on political
and economic grounds.
That political reasons may justify a restriction, or even dictate the
entire debarment of certain defined classes of immigrants, is to be
admitted. Thus the exclusion of Chinese immigrants may be defended
on the grounds of a broad public policy, with reasons which cannot
logically be adduced with regard to any branch of the Caucasian race.
The most cogent of these reasons, and the one that has afforded the
only rational basis for the policy adopted, is not the economic
element of the subject, not that the Chinese live cheaply and work
cheaply, but that their assimilation with the rest of the population
is practically impossible. To what extent the theoretical possibility
of their being merged in the general population could be realized, to
what extent its realization would be desirable or the contrary, to what
extent a mixture of the Caucasian and Mongolian races would enhance
or deteriorate their respective qualities, physical and psychical, we
need not here stop to inquire. Suffice it to re-state the fact that
political, or perhaps ultimately ethnological reasons may here be
considered as prompting a course which could not reasonably be adopted
on any other ground. But in the case of immigrants of the Caucasian
race, such opposition as has been made from time to time, though
frequently insisted upon as a political necessity, can only, in the
absence of any broad ethnological basis, be argued on economic grounds.
* * * * *
The discussions engendered by propositions to restrict immigration have
recurred at various periods of our history and have been factors in
our politics from the beginning of our institutions. There was indeed
already in the old Colonial times an anti-immigration or Nativist
Party, almost before there were any natives to make it up. In fact,
the subject has cropped out whenever some slight occasion offered, and
particularly whenever politicians on the in- or the outside needed
a new string to harp upon. Some of us are old enough to remember
something of the native American agitation which began as far back
as 1835, and which took shape in the so-called "American" party,
afterwards generally known as the "Know-Nothings," about 1844. In that
year the Know-Nothing Party carried the city of New York on a mayoralty
election by a large majority, and for a time the movement spread widely
throughout the country. It developed strong religious prejudices, and
was marked by the memorable anti-Catholic riots in Philadelphia.
The odium which those disgraceful outrages brought on the "American"
party was attempted to be overcome by making it a secret organization,
and in the political confusion resulting from the breaking up of the
old Whig party, the former grew to such proportions that in 1855 it
carried no less than nine state elections. That the movement then had
no vital force, but was only a political stalking-horse for partisan
purposes, became manifest in the Presidential election of 1856, when
the Know Nothing candidates carried only the State of Maryland, and
that only by aid of the remnant of the Whig party and the bludgeons
of the "Plug-Uglies." The outcome of the whole movement, politically
considered, was the complete extinction of the party organization which
had fostered, and the permanent discredit of the party leaders who had
promoted it.
But the lessons of the past, the arguments and considerations which
have repeatedly led to the rejection of a prescriptive policy, have now
to be gone over again in this later generation, and the reason for this
is plain enough. The economic aspect of the question is more permanent
than the political, and the economic argument more plausible than the
other. The objectionable features inseparable from a considerable
influx of newcomers into a community, large or small, are palpable and
on the surface, while the inestimable value of these newcomers, by
virtue of the added material and social forces with which they endow
the community, becomes perceptible only upon a closer investigation
of the subject. It thus happens that when an unusually large number
of new arrivals disturbs for a time some existing economic condition,
the community is startled by those immediately affected with an outcry
against the intruding force, and it is then only on investigation
that it becomes apparent that while indeed a comparatively few
individuals suffer, and even they but temporarily, the new element is
of far-reaching benefit to the community at large.
A quite parallel instance, as far as it goes, is the effect of the
introduction of machinery in substitution of hand labor. The history of
inventions is burdened with the details of opposition which gathered
at every step of the process through which Man has brought to his
service the forces of Nature. So too, the practical aid of immigration
in subduing the domain of Nature on this Western Continent has often
been decried as inimical to the interests of those native to the soil,
notwithstanding that even a cursory analysis of the question proves
clearly the fact that the immigrant not only does not travail against
the native's interest, but on the contrary, aids and enhances that
interest beyond all computation. Just as the throng of new inventions
temporarily disarranges existent conditions of commerce and of
industry, with the immediate result of causing economic distress to
some groups of individuals, so the tide of immigration temporarily
affects existent conditions in the centers of population, but the
eventual benefit of the new force is as certain to be felt in the
latter case as in the former.
Let us for a moment consider the character and extent of the impulses
which the influx of the newcomers imparts to the social organism. The
nature of these impulses is two-fold; the increase of numbers adds
power to the community, and the diversity of interests which is an
inevitable concomitant of increased population, brings wealth, culture,
and all the higher gains of human effort.
To elucidate these propositions we cannot do better than here quote the
carefully considered statements of the foremost of American publicists,
Henry C. Carey, himself an American of Americans, and the great
expounder of the protective system of political economy. As Chairman
of the Committee on Industrial Interests and Labor, in its report to
the Constitutional Convention of Pennsylvania in 1873, referring to the
Immigration question, he writes as follows: